Digsnow(Pupart)

Dion spun on his heel to face the guard that had been sitting on the opposite column, and in that same motion, brought his left elbow down on the top of the creature’s skull before it could so much as look up at him. It joined its coworker in the realm of the unconscious.

[ELBOW]

The teenager glanced back and saw that the other eight mutants were scrambling out of their seats to subdue him.

One short yet nimble specimen had actually clambered onto the top of a chair and leapt at him, a screwdriver in each of its hand, both points aimed at Dion’s broiling blue eyes.

Instead of waiting to be pounced on, Dion ducked forward and put himself directly under the dual-wielding goon. He was now out of reach of its screwdrivers but not out of its sight, so it had a great view as the firstborn son of the Aquatos twisted his hip and drove a fist upwards into its torso.

[UPPERCUT]

The diminutive enforcer was still looking at him when Dion grabbed it by its shirt just before it hit the roof of the bus and then slammed it onto his knee, knocking the wind and fight out of the rest of the critter’s body.

[KNEE]

“Children, please!” Milla implored from the front of the bus. “Do not play so rough!”

As if in defiance of the Psychonaut’s plea, the largest of the guards lumbered onto the aisle, unholstering its shock mace as it advanced towards Dion.

“Dion, watch out!” Frazie warned.

“That mace is one big, shark-slaying taser!” Raz added.

Dion would have likely been wary of the weapon even if he wasn’t informed that it was coursing with electricity. If the news made him more wary, scared, furious, or increased any of the alarmed or angry emotions whirling about his cranium, he didn’t show it. Instead, he removed a combination wrench from the belt of his most recently downed foe, leapt back, and flicked it sideways towards the brute as it pulled back its arm.

[TOSS]

The lad wasn’t as good a shot as his father or Frazie, and his mother and other siblings could give him a run for his money on a bad day. But the cramped confines of his prison and his Psilirium-honed drive played to his advantage. The wrench whirled in a shimmering arc to strike the mace-wielder square in the wrist holding the club.

There was a clang and a crunch, followed by the giant screaming in pain. It stubbornly tried to keep hold of the mace, even as its broken grip loosened. In its mad flailing, it accidentally struck one of its fellow guards with its weapon. It was the other, shorter mutant in diving gear, and it had the misfortune of having the baton touch its helmet. Bronze isn’t a very good electrical conductor, but tens of thousands of volts are still tens of thousands of volts, which were enough to send the smaller accomplice shuddering and sputtering onto the floor.

“Young man, apologize to those two little boys right now!” Milla demanded. 

Before the brute could recover, Dion dashed forward. He grabbed the outer shoulders of the aisle seats, and pulled his arms as he slung himself forward. His knees curled to his chest for a split second before his body snapped taut, putting the entire force of the maneuver into both of his boots as they crashed into the mutant’s corpulent gut.

[KICK]

“Yowch!” Raz cried. “These giant flaming words are going to make my actual eyes go blind!”

“And they keep coming a second or two after he does the thing!” Frazie complained. “It’s almost like he’s moving faster than he…thinks?”

The creature doubled over, its helmet tumbling off, exposing that the lips on the top of its head and the gills on its neck were wheezing for air.

Still holding the chairs, Dion let the impact throw him backward, setting his legs into a lunging posture. Then he yanked and whipped himself forward again, planting a second dropkick square into that bizarre inhuman visage.

[KICK]

“Frazie, can we regroup in Agent Vodello’s head?” Raz asked. “I’m starting to get motion sickness from this fight for some reason.”

“Me too, Raz.” Frazie was feeling unexpectedly nauseous. She had performed drills and stunts far more harrowing and dynamic than what Dion was doing at the moment without so much as a dip of dizziness, sometimes even with a full stomach. But perhaps it was the fiery letters or how she was seeing the world from a slightly taller perspective, but she was now finding it difficult to stay conscious. “We might be able to back him up better from there anyway.”

They left Dion’s head as a high-pitched shriek tried to hold up the declining behemoth only for it and its owner to be silenced and pinned under the collapsed wall of wetsuit-covered scales.

The way Milla was perceiving the battle wasn’t much nicer. Her perspective was fixed, nigh-unwavering, so the newfound stability was keen. However, her paralyzing delusions remained firm. The wardens Dion had defeated still looked like children to Milla. Upon closer inspection, the illusions weren’t perfect as they more closely resembled life-sized cardboard cutouts of children than flesh-and-blood kids, but the carnage Dion was creating was still rather disquieting.

A pigtailed preschooler was sprawled on the floor. A girl scout and boy scout sitting on the same row but on opposite aisles were slumped in their chairs; their berets and garrison caps rudely smushed. The errant twitching of a young noble heir ruffled the lace collar of his crushed velvet jacket. And a wide, heavyset, pimple-faced preteen dressed in a sailor’s uniform was lying prone on his back. Frazie and Raz had no doubt that if they peeled the brutish beast off the floor, its smushed cohort would have still looked like a cutely dressed kid in Milla’s corrupted vision.

Speaking of being cutely dressed, Dion had not escaped being filtered through the hallucination. He looked more fully defined than the other “children” and still resembled himself, but his circus costume was a different matter. It had been replaced by a subdued yet distinct choir boy uniform with a short-sleeve white button-up shirt, a little bow tie, a sweater vest, polished shoes, and to the discomfort of his siblings, a pair of black polyester shorts. Regrettably, Frazie and Raz glumly recognized that while their sleeves and hems weren’t long enough (otherwise they would have been a perfect fit) for Dion and that they were imaginary, they were probably the nicest and least stitched-together clothes their eldest brother had ever worn.

“Milla?” Frazie meekly greeted.

“Imaginary Frazie! I’m so glad you’re back!” Milla sobbed. “You need to call the police, the national guard, the Vatican! The children! The children are so frightened that they’re turning on each other!”

Raz tried to console his idol with a ‘there-there’ and calmly said. “It’s only a little roughhousing.”

“Roughhousing? That strangely tall and toned bully in his Sunday’s best has already brutalized so many! It’s a massacre!”

Dion rolled his left shoulder and shook the feeling back into his legs. He was frowning, no doubt berating himself for having strained his limbs too fast and fiercely while grossly outnumbered and with no way to flee the scene. If he broke a bone or even so much as sprained anything, he would be finished.

There were four foes to go: A ballerina, a baseball player, a mall dojo karateka, and a band geek. All of whom, like the thugs their images were plastered over, were around Dion’s height. They had huddled together, shambling forward as one; their arms and weapons outstretched.

The ballerina tentatively clawed at Dion, seeking to seize and drag him into the center of their mass so he could be subdued. The acrobat gingerly backed away only to for one of his hands to dart forward and grab the dancer by her blouse; he swiftly pulled, smacking her face into a headrest. But instead of trying to separate her from the pack to finish her off, he shoved her back into it, slowing the progress of her peers.

“Not her pretty face!” Milla cried.

When he was very young, Dion had been told by his father that if he ever got into a scrap, he had to either win or flee, whichever was safest or possible. There was no way off the underwater bus, so that meant victory was his only option. He couldn’t risk going toe-to-toe with his remaining enemies, but there were two factors deeply in his favor. The first was that while he was their sole opposition in a cramped rectangular space, he was one boy while they were a squad of portly fish people; there were more things for him to hit, and since the quartet had chosen to bunch themselves together, that made them slower targets, too.

Dion then proceeded to show them what his second advantage was.

He seemed to retreat towards the window seat of a nearby row, but the moment the ballerina tried to corner him against it, he vaulted over the top of the chair to place himself further up the column, smacking one of her cheeks with his foot as he did so. When the band geek tried to chase him there, Dion vaulted up the column again, kneeing his attacker in forehead as he spun round. This repeated twice more, with Dion landing a glancing blow on each of his pursuers, before he sauntered back onto the aisle. He was now at the rear end of the bus.

“You are the cruelest choir boy I’ve ever seen! I will be talking to your priest about this!” Milla threatened.

Frazie had been fully prepared to support Dion with a Psi-Blast or a telekinetic hold. It would’ve spent precious mental energy, but she wasn’t going to leave her older brother in a lurch. However, as she saw Dion relax his posture as the phony children rallied, she allowed herself a dark sense of glee. Because she suddenly understood that Loboto had imprisoned Dion in the worst jail possible. For his guards.

Like his siblings, Dion had been trained in долина гопак  or “Valley Hopak”, the national martial art of their lost fatherland of Grulovia. It was an extremely mobile fighting style that focused on outmaneuvering and harassing one’s opponent (or even multiple opponents) into submission. Each brother and sister was similarly skilled at it, tweaking their usage to suit their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses; chiefly so they could protect themselves and one other, but also to protect themselves from one another whenever their tempers reached a fever pitch.

Though typically an asset while he was out in the open, Dion’s greater height was an appropriately huge hindrance whenever sibling rivalries flared up in closed spaces. The inside of the family caravan while it was traveling on the road had been a particularly vexing purgatory. Whenever he tried to fight back or exert his authority, he was always at risk of scraping his knuckles on the walls, banging his head on an overhanging piece of luggage, or worst of all, breaking one of his mother or grandmother’s antiques.

Lacking the ability to shrink, Dion trained himself to be more cognizant of his surroundings and how he physically fit into them: how many paces would it take to get from one end to the room to the other; how high or low the ceiling was; could he exert his full height or would he need to be more conservative with his stature? He endured a multitude of wet willies, gum blobs in his ponytail, and spiders down the back of his shirt as he fostered this awareness over the years. But after he had honed it enough, he could sidestep a knockout punch from a berserk Queepie to put him into a sleeper hold until his toothache had passed, and even snatch a frenzied Mirtala out of the air when she was on one of her destructive sugar highs. Although the less said about what he became capable of doing to Frazie and Raz whenever they challenged the sanctity of “first dibs”, the better.

The “schoolchildren” were now experiencing this firsthand. Every open palm strike and stomp of his landed whilst almost every attempt of theirs to retaliate was thwarted by the layout of the bus and more often by the guard next to them. The recently trounced got in the way of the recently recovered as they tried to reach Dion, and the recently recovered prevented their woozy accomplices from being able to fall back, making them susceptible to a follow-up hit.

The already unconscious also acted as unconventional allies to the teen. Their still standing counterparts had to take care not to trip over them; the giant security guard’s prone form all but split the aisle into two sections. Dion wasn’t nearly as limited in his movements. In fact, the undersides of the seats lacked the plastic coverings and supporting cross bars found in those of normal buses. If Dion was careful, he could slide underneath an entire column of chairs, giving him an alternative way to outflank and assault the opposition.

Which Dion did.

Over and over again.

The blows came at the final four from above, below, and their sides.

The attacks were numerous yet calculated, taking care not to knock the hapless henchmen into the walls, windows, ceiling and even floor. Egged on by Psilirium as he was, Dion couldn’t forget that he was still in a delicately sealed public transportation vehicle beneath the sea. He could practically hear the Hand of Galochio tapping on the glass, waiting to snare him if the rust bucket was breached.

There were a few hiccups with his onslaught, of course.

A brief duel commenced with the band geek pulling out a bone saw that Dion parried by gripping the handle of a Doobie Duck lunch box and wielding it like a chakram.

“No running with knives!” Milla tried to order.

The karateka swiped at him; Dion caught the cardboard arm and ripped it off, then slapped him with it. Strangely, the blue belt wasn’t in much pain, though there was a thick band of confetti where the arm had once been.

“Is there a doctor in the house?!” Milla implored.

Ultimately, the barrage went undeterred much to the compounding bruising and fatigue of the quartet.

Unable to take another round of punishment, the baseball player shoved his classmates towards Dion and made a mad dash for the bus’s wide rearview window.

“That is not the home plate, little one. Please return to your seat!” But the amateur athlete couldn’t respond to Milla’s request, because there was a hammer clenched between his teeth.

Frazie and Raz’s consciousnesses tripped over themselves as they tried to leap into Dion’s head to warn him: the guard was going to flood the bus to manifest a homefield advantage for the fish, and a watery tomb for everyone else.

Thankfully, they weren’t the only ones to notice.

Dion broke into a sprint, and bolstered by a mere few feet of acceleration, he leapt clean over the three jumbled obstacles. At the crest of his leap, he dove downwards into a forward roll.

Raz was delighted to recognize it as the mid-air Dive jump Dion had taught him a while back.

The tumble delivered Dion right behind the baseball player as he was leaning back to smash the window. A deft twist of the little leaguer’s wrists later, and the hammer clattered to the ground. The slugger didn’t even have time to yelp before Dion whirled him around to face the other “kids” he had abandoned and tried to rescue.

Frazie and Raz beheld a familiar coldness in their elder brother’s face. He was about to end this fight, and to their newfound horror, they knew how he was going to do it.

As he dipped into a crouch, Dion shoved both of his hands down the back of the little leaguer’s trousers. The pompadoured performer then drove his legs against the floor. His hips snapped forward. His entire body straightened in one fluid burst, channeling the force of the motion through his arms and up into the waistband of the dazed mutant’s undergarments.

The slugger’s cleated shoes left the ground. His eyes bulged, and his limbs went rigid. A startled, silent scream failed to escape his throat.

Its fellows did nothing to try and help. They simply stood there, mouths agape. What else could they do when faced with the sight of the first wedgie to ever be inflicted beneath the ocean?

“NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!” Milla despaired.

“Look away, Raz.” Frazie choked back a sob.

“I can’t, Frazie.” Raz squeaked. “Agent Vodello won’t blink.”

Dion’s “Sparticulo Supremo” was his terminal sanction and his riskiest form of domestic deterrence. Though capable of doling out exponentially potent amounts of disciplinary intimidation in seconds, it risked souring the mood for the rest of a day and possibly even whole weekends. More than once, Dion had screwed up the technique and had been grounded for ruining a precious pair of underoos (that the carnival coffers would have to replace) in his pursuit of order and a kind of fairness.

Honestly, as refined and unhesitatingly performed as it was, Dion didn’t actually enjoy smiting his family with it. However, there were some days when his younger siblings got it into their heads that they outnumbered him 4-to-1. And on those days, he needed to remind them how that didn’t matter.

Not wanting to permanently ruin their clothes, a Sparticulo Supremo on one of Dion’s brothers and sisters usually lasted a few uncomfortable, embarrassing seconds. Outsider thieves and ruffians could get hit with it for twice or thrice the amount of time as it was meant to end and deescalate altercations rather than exacerbate them. And yet, those in his fraternal circle occasionally wondered how long Dion could maintain such a wedgie – free from parental or legal consequence - before the garment or his strength reached their breaking point.

Frazie, Raz, Milla, and the remaining fish guards were about to find out.

5 seconds, the baseball boy hung from Dion’s double-fisted grip.

10 seconds.

15 seconds, a new record.

20 seconds.

25.

At the half-minute mark, Dion ducked into a sharp spin, and hurled the little leaguer into his audience.

Battered and exhausted from the brawling, and devastated by what they had been forced to witness, the ballerina, band geek, and one-armed karateka didn’t even try to fight the impact of their comrade’s body on theirs or the darkening of their sight. There was no fight left in any of them.

Alone and triumphant, Dion finally permitted himself a deep breath and began to walk back towards the front of the bus, stretching his muscles as he did so. As he was about to pass the chair of the first guard he knocked out, he froze. His eyes were wide, clear, and worried. He gingerly plucked something from the seat and rigidly resumed his stroll.

The mixture of fear and awe that had coursed through his psychic siblings during his coup de grace drained out of them, and was replaced by a withering contempt. Held in Dion’s left hand were the remains of the pocket radio. He was trying to palm it at an angle where the surviving speaker and a mostly intact display screen were immediately visible to passerby, but he could barely conceal how it was an inoperable, jagged fragment.

Hesitant as he was to do so, he soon arrived at Milla’s side, who was gazing at him with as much hatred as she could muster toward a presumed adolescent.

“Raz? Frazie?” Dion called out. “Hello? Are you guys there?” he bit his lip, grimacing as a dour thought entered his gel-laced head. “Were you guys ever there? Crap, I hope I didn’t just imagine you were.”

Frazie was tempted to just take Raz and leave to pursue Tala or Sasha’s locations. It wasn’t like there was anything more they could do for Milla and Dion. But it would be rude to bail on him without a word. Of admonishment if nothing else. “We’re here, Didi.” Frazie said after shifting into his skull with their younger brother; the Psilirium taint within had returned to its lower levels.

“Great! Great.” Dion tried to smile then let it fade when he remembered that neither of his siblings would be able to see it from inside his head. “Apologies. It took me a while to get here. It’s just that when I heard about what these guys were doing to Queepie, something came over me and I couldn’t stop myself from doing…this.” He gestured towards the ten slumbering sea mutants. “By the way, Raz. You mentioned something about dad.”

“Yeah.” To Raz’s mild relief, he saw that the guard who had been the karateka in Milla’s eyes hadn’t been dismembered; rather, Dion had ripped one of the sleeves off of his lab coat during their scuffle. “He’s been strapp-mmmfffrghrkh!”

“What Raz is trying to tell you-.” Frazie claimed, mentally scrambling Raz’s speech before it could set Dion off on another rampage. “Is that dad is in the same place as Queepie. He’s watching over him.”

“Heh. Well these scaly suckers are in for a surprise.” Dion preened. “Dad will bust him and Queepie out of their cell in no time.”

“That’s certainly a possibility.” Frazie relinquished her hold on Raz’s words. “Right, Raz?”

“Mhmm,” their little brother agreed, picking up on the implication.

“So now that I’m here, what’s the next step in the big rescue plan?” Dion asked.

“You can’t possibly think we’re that stupid.”

“Have some shame, Dion.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot I was holding this thing when I took a swing at that goon, okay?” he bemoaned, gazing down at the held remains of the electronic device he had been tasked with delivering. “How was this piece of junk supposed to help Ms. Vodello anyway?”

“Milla has Psilirium poisoning.”

“Don’t you mean Psitanium?”

“When did you learn about-never mind. It’s a different psychoactive mineral.” Frazie corrected. “Long story short, it causes severe physical sickness and hallucinations in psychics. That’s why she’s been so, um, moody and, ermm, out there.”

If Milla had heard the tepid description with her own telepathy, she didn’t show it. She was looking over Dion’s shoulder, towards the railway. “Maybe I should just let the train hit us. Maybe we deserve to be run over. There’s no one left to save.”

Frazie winced. “And one of the ways to get rid of the symptoms is to expose the patient to their favorite kind of music.”

“Disco, in this case.” Raz clarified.

“Disco music, huh? Hmmm.” Dion stroked his chin. “Desperate times call for desperate rhymes.” He tossed away the shattered radio and pointed a finger towards his eyes. “Raz, get yourself over to Ms. Vodello’s head. On the count of three, we’re going to try singing ‘Long Train Runnin’ to break the spell.”

“YES.” Raz exclaimed.

“Not going to happen.” Frazie denied.

“It’s a 2-to-1 vote, sis.”

“Yeah, Frazie. We’re the majority.”

“This isn’t a democracy! Milla barely survived Raz’s caterwauling. A duet from the two of you could finish her off.” Frazie spat. “This is exactly why we needed that pocket radio, but you just had to go and break it.”

“But there’s a big radio right here.” Dion protested, pointing at the dashboard. “Let’s use that.”

“We tried it already, Didi. There’s no power.”

“Of course there’s power. There are lights on up there, there are cameras in the corner over there-.”

“Urrgh.” Raz groused. “The cameras, Frazie.”

“Crrrrrrrrrrrrud,” she droned. “How did we miss those?” How had they indeed? They were partly how they knew where Dion and the rest of Loboto’s hostages were being held. The deranged dentist, or at least the clerks manning the surveillance station, had likely seen the entire melee. Hostile reinforcements might already be on their way.

“Ha! If you didn’t notice those, there might be some other things you overlooked.” Dion popped a small panel on the side of the radio and peered inside. “Everything in here seems to be where it should be.” At least if it had anything in common with the family caravan’s radio. He gazed up at the ceiling towards the dim bulbs and swiveling surveillance cameras. “Those have wires that are leading outside, probably to like a generator something.” He turned back to study what was behind the driver seat console. “But the wires here are heading straight towards the bus’s engine.”

“So it’s on a separate circuit.” Frazie wasn’t quite asking.

“Probably.” Dion shrugged. “I think we could jumpstart it with enough juice. Either of you guys spot any batteries or solar panels while you were skulking around this tub?”

Raz’s consciousness bristled with anticipation. “No, but that gives me a great idea!” he claimed. “Frazie. Remember all those electric eels we saw? If we could lure a few of them into the car’s engine, then-.”

“No, Little Lord Fauntleroy lookalike! Stay away!” Milla screamed. “Don’t be a hero!”

Dion, and Frazie and Raz with him, looked back towards the aisle. The shorter diving suit fish guard was awake again. Indignant eerie eyes bore into his indirect attacker through the grilled glass porthole of his helmet. There was a pitch-black scorch mark on the headgear where the shock mace had struck the brass. The same shock mace that the creature now held in his hands.

Ignoring Milla’s advice, the minion let out a vengeful shriek and charged, uncaring when he stepped over or even on his still slumbering coworkers as he did so. What was hard for him to ignore, however, was Dion’s face. Maybe his noggin was still jumbled up from the recent electrocution, perhaps it was a trick of the artificial light, but despite having his weapon primed and showing he was determined to use it, his enemy looked almost happy to see him.

Because Dion was very glad to see him. He was so glad, in fact, that he gave the straggler a private show: he stepped forward, chambered his knee across his torso, swiveled his hips, and abruptly extended his leg to deliver a side kick directly into his assailant’s solar plexus.

[KICK]

The henchfish was blasted back right into the bulk of its taller twin, and rejoined him in unconsciousness.

The mace spun in the void, having slipped from the creature’s grip.

It wasn’t without an owner long.

Before it could finish falling, Dion snatched it out of the air, turned it downwards, pressed its switch with his pinkie, and plunged the thunderball onto the dead bus radio.

The shell of the device shook, its speakers roared, and its screen displayed the station it was currently tuned to:

105.7.

“Ain’t no goddamn way!” Frazie yelled.

“Watch your language, sis.”

“That didn’t just happen.” Raz muttered. “The odds that the station would be-grrr-no one’s that lucky!”

“I dunno, Raz. That sounds a lot like mirror ball music to me.”

“GET BENT!” his less fortunate brother and sister cursed.

“Nyaha. Love you guys, too.”

A gentle and cadent sound traipsed through the frustration, mockery, and retro hit playlist. “Frazie? Is that you?”

“Milla!” Frazie perked up. “Yes, it’s me!”

“How is this possible?” Milla asked. Frazie was relieved to see that the cure had worked as Nona said it would. The erratic panic in her levitation mentor’s voice was gone. Milla was even able to hear her with her telepathy without Frazie having to zip into her head. “Whose thoughts are those mixed in with yours? Who are all these unconscious…people? And this young man whose brain you’re in?” she squinted. “He looks an awful lot like the photos of your big brother.”

“That’s because I am.” Dion said, striding forward before Frazie could answer. “Afternoon. Dion Aquato. Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He brought his arm out for a handshake, which Milla tepidly accepted. “Rest assured, these thugs won’t be bothering you again any time soon. We can move on to the next phase of Operation: Save Mr. Truman from his kidnappers to Save the Day, just like we all planned all along.” He winked.

“How did you know Director Truman had been taken?” Milla blinked. “That’s supposed to be top secret. Frazie?”

“Alright. Quick Q&A: This other consciousness tied to me is my little brother Razputin. Say ‘hi’ Raz.”

“Hi, Agent Vodello. Ah - again. I’m so excited to be working with you. Like I said before, I am such a huge fa-.”

“Moving right along, those kids you saw getting demolished? These are them. They’re Doctor Loboto’s creations. And that daffy dentist not only has Truman and Sasha, but also our dad and our youngest brother and sister. Raz and I are with our grandma Nona right beneath his lab, and we can’t get out because the chamber is flooded, and Psilirium really doesn’t agree with me.”

“And your mother. Donatella. Is she here, too?”

“Mom broke out on her own, but we lost track of her.”

“I see.” Milla nodded. Then she frowned. “No, I don’t actually see. Why is your family here? How are you all here?”

“Milla. I’ll explain everything to you later, but right now we really need your help to save everyone from Loboto. Please.”

“Of course, Frazie. Of course. But I’m not sure there’s much I can do. The delusions are gone, but I still feel so exposed. So weak.”

“Milla…”

“Hold on. Agent Vodello. Agent Vodello!” Raz interrupted. “You should try channeling through Dion! He’s got loads of mental energy to spare!”

“Careful, Raz.” Dion warned through his winning smile. “That didn’t sound like a compliment.”

“Dion, are you really going to leave a lady hanging? I know you’re a one-woman man now, but-.”

“I get it. I get it. Enough.” Dion shushed. “Ahem. Ms. Vodello, I’m not sure how much I can help, but if this channeling whatever can get my family out of this jam or at least make you feel better, then please, be my guest.”

“That’s very chivalrous of you, Dion. I cannot guarantee this will work, but-.” Milla rose to her feet. She studied her gloved hands and knee high boots, looking almost puzzled that she had managed to get out of the driver seat. “Ohhh. Oh my. I feel…”

“Normal again?” Frazie offered.

“Not nearly, Frazie. I’m far from firing on all cylinders, but I don’t feel totally awful.” Milla took a peek at her reflection in the bus rearview mirror and did her best not to grimace. “That can wait. As I was saying, your big brother’s head is both spacious yet brimming with raw mental energy at the same time. I can’t be certain if it’s the Psilirium, leftover adrenaline from thrashing all these guards, or the Aquato circus daredevil lifestyle, but he’s so infectiously alert and engaged.”

“Maybe it’s the Power of True Luuuuv.” Raz drawled.

“You’re so lucky your physical body isn’t here, Pooter.” Dion blushed, running a palm across his right pocket. He swallowed a sigh of relief when he felt the notepad hadn’t fallen out of it.

“Between these groovy tunes and this new pep in my step, I think I can start working towards getting me and Dion out of here. Though it might take an hour or two to get this old bus ship-shape and ready for undersea levitation.”

“Raz and I could try to help out Sasha while you work.” Frazie offered. “Any idea where we can find him? Do the two of you still have that merged mentality of yours?”

“Agents Nein and Vodello have a joint mental world!?” Raz squeed. “I knew the forums were right!”

“In this case, partly yes, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read online, little Razputin.” Milla chided. She closed her eyes, put two of her right fingers back onto her temple and stretched out her left hand again. The frown that crept along her face did little to mar how much more relaxed this pose was than it had been earlier. “Yes, I can sense him. He’s not responding to my messages, but I can tell that he’s nervous, restless, and…giddy?” her eyelashes fluttered open. “Wait, I think that was just a bad reading. He’s regained his composure to hide how he’s so very…thrilled? Excited? OVERJOYED? I’ve never seen him overjoyed before.”

 “Dang. Maybe the forums were wrong.”

“Raz, zip it.” Frazie quietly growled.

“Hmph!” Milla plopped herself back in the driver’s chair and crossed her arms. “Well, next time you see AGENT NEIN, please be sure to let him know that I wish him and his Psilirium-induced fantasies all the best.”

“Will do, Milla.” Frazie cringed, reminding herself that Milla wasn’t entirely her usual passionate yet coolheaded self, and that she wouldn’t hold this against her partner of many years once they got out of the Rhombus of Ruin. Hopefully. “Did you see where we can find him though?”

“He’s in-.” Milla put a palm to her forehead and squinted. “A really big dish.”

“A dish?” Frazie asked. Sasha’s surveillance footage didn’t look like he was on an oversized plate. Could it be something dish-like or dish-shaped instead. “Like a merry-go-round?”

“Or a Ferris Wheel?” Raz offered.

“Or a gravitron?” Dion suggested.

“It’s not as intricate as any of those.” Milla explained. “It’s more like a very, very flat Dutch oven, or a pointy frisbee, or two drum cymbals glued together.” Her hand slid off her face, which had regained a smidge of her former worry. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more – apart from how he’s happier being there than any of the clubs I managed to drag him to. But I hope this helps you in your search for Sasha, and the rest of your loved ones, too, Frazie.”

“Thanks, Milla. We’ll show ourselves out. Feel better soon, okay?”

“I’ll certainly, try.” the colorful agent afforded herself a tasteful chuckle. “Oh, and it was a pleasure meeting you, Razputin.”

“Really?! I mean, mhrmm, it was a pleasure meeting you as well, Agent Vodello.”

“Please, call me Milla.”

“w-Will do…Milla. Goodbye for now.”

“See you later.”

“Yo,” Dion interjected. “Don’t I get a touching farewell?”

“What’s the matter?” Frazie jeered. “Jealous that you’re not the coolest person in the room?”

“Sky’s big enough for two suns.” Dion preened.

“And your head’s empty enough for an extra brain.” Frazie teased. “Take care of yourself, Didi.”

“Try not to flip out again, bro.”

“I won’t if you two don’t screw up this rescue mission. My big Gisu forgiveness lie depends on it!” Dion ordered.

As Frazie sundered the mental connection she and Raz had shared with Dion so they could return to the chamber, she was perplexed to find that there was wood under her fingers and grass beneath her feet. The clouds were the color of orange groves and concord grapevines. And it was a different day.

----

The woods were deep and dark. The sun was beginning to set. On his log that he had checked for ants, spiders, and poisonous frogs, Razputin Aquato sat alone.

“Boo.”

“Gah!” Raz screamed, nearly toppling off his seat, too alarmed to telekinetically pull up a rock or even flail with a Psi-Punch to defend himself from…Dion? “How’d you sneak up on me!?” the boy demanded, regaining his balance. “I was scanning the woods for any dirt bag big brother brain signals.”

Dion’s index fingers pointed at his temples before twirling them outwards. “I got my mind real zen so you wouldn’t think me coming.”

“So you just made it emptier?”

“Hey, it worked.” Dion noted, plopping himself down next to Raz.

“There might be skunks or wolves in this log.”

“You’re more careful than that, Pooter.”

Raz smothered the mote of warmth Dion probably expected him to feel from that half-compliment.

And so they sat on their fallen piece of wood that was free of dangerous insects and animals, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular as there wasn’t much to look at besides trees, shrubs, and dirt. Minutes ticked by. From what Raz could read from his head, Dion seemed content to lazily let what was left of the day pass by. That wasn’t like him.

“…are you going to drag me back to finish my errands?”

“Oh, I got those all sorted before I tracked you down.”

Typical. Dion the Dutiful. Mister Goody-Two Shoes Doo-Doo Head. Admittedly, it was a bit of a relief to Raz that there wouldn’t be a glut of chores waiting for him back at camp. But couldn’t he have at least tried to chase after him right away? Raz could’ve used the laugh he would’ve gotten from giving him the slip.

“Why bother? I thought you hated me.”

Dion groaned. “Raz, I don’t-huh,” he paused. “If I made you feel that unwelcome, maybe I’m the reason Frazie left.”

Raz rolled his eyes. The ego on this guy. “You’re giving yourself too much credit.”

“Maybe.” Dion shrugged. He tucked some stray strands of hair behind his right ear, and used that same hand to scratch the back of his neck. Not a move wasted, even as his younger sibling saw there was an unusual amount of subjects and concepts swarming atop his skull. “Look, bro. I’m sorry. It’s been really weird. Dad’s psychic. Mom’s mad at dad. Nona’s freaking out. And now we know what really did in grandpa and cursed us.” Raz couldn’t call those out as excuses. He wasn’t a big fan of all that either. “I should want to deal with this – I need to. I gotta.” A calloused thumb ran over a scarred knuckle. “But I just keep thinking how none of this would’ve happened if Frazie hadn’t played hooky.”

“Hmm.”

“But that’s real dumb.” Dion added. “Because you, dad, and Frazie would’ve still been psychic, and I can tell that at least you and pops are pretty relived you don’t have to keep that a secret anymore.”

“…she would’ve liked that, too.”

“You’d probably know.” Dion chuckled. “Because you’re both psychic.”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on. Did Frazie know you were psychic?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know she was psychic?”

“Yup.”

“Because you didn’t know dad was until like last week.”

“I knew Frazie was psychic but not dad.”

“But he knew you two were psychic all along.”

“That’s what he told me.”

“So do you guys not have telepathy? I thought that sort of a default fortune tell-I mean-psychic skill.”

“It is.”

“Are you bad at it then? No shame. I mean, I can’t do it either, so-.”

“Dion.” Raz interrupted, locking his gaze with his brother’s. So much for suffering in silence. “I’m pretty okay at it. Which is how I’m sure that Frazie would’ve been happy to not keep her powers a secret. Like I am. In spite of everything, like today, and yesterday, and the day before that, I’m glad that I’m not hiding them anymore,” he sighed. “And my telepathy is also how I know that you just meant everything you just said.”

“That’s kind of creepy, dude.”

“Well, you always mean everything you say. Even when you’re kissing up to mom and dad, or telling your town girl of the month that she’s the ‘loveliest lass in all the land’ before you mash face behind the bleachers.”

“I’ve never used that pick-up line.”

“If you did, you would have meant it. And you would have believed it. I don’t know why the ladies do though.”

“Okay. Then you can believe this: My big goal right now is making sure the four-FIVE-five of us don’t drift apart like Nona and Aunty Lu did.”

“You’re not going to chain us together, are you?” Raz winced. “Or lock us up in a cage?”

“No! What the heck, Raz? I thought you could read minds.”

“You’re not a very visual thinker, Dion.”

“Because I don’t even want to imagine the worst case scenario where one of us or even all of us try to hurt each other.” He reached out and gave Raz’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. The boy didn’t pull away. “And I’m not talking about noogies or pinecones or even cheap shots below the belt. I mean real harm, Raz. The kind that lasts or even ends things. Forever.”

 “I get it.”

“Good.” Dion smiled. “Because there’s enough fortune teller mumbo-jumbo hanging around our necks without more water curses being added to the pot.”

“I wouldn’t curse you to perish in water, Dion.”

“Aw, thanks Ra-.” Dion squinted. His little brother was looking up at him with his earnest green eyes and a small, gentle smile on his face. His body was relaxed, free of malice or melancholy. For a moment, he saw what his mother seemingly did whenever she looked at her beloved “Pootie”: a benign, beaming image of boyish sweetness and innocence.

Yeah right.

“-pause. Pause.” Dion repeated. “What would you curse me to perish of?”

Raz batted his eyelashes. “Hair gel poisoning.”

“Oh, it’s gonna be like that, is it?” Dion challenged. “Well, you better learn how to levitate quick, because I’d curse you to pass on of an enlarged prostate.

“Ha!” Raz barked. “Not before I cursed you to meet your end from ingrown chest hairs.”

“Well, I’d secretly curse you to fall prey to a horde of head spiders before you got the chance.”

“Ohoho! Yeah? Well, I’d outflank your secret curse with-!”

----

“I can’t believe I was feeling sorry for you two for a solid minute there.” Frazie fumed.

“We should move on back to Nona. Dion and me were at this for a couple more hours.”

----

When they arrived back at the chamber, the pair told Nona what had happened at the bus.

She smiled when they cycled through Dion’s poems and made soft, stealthy applause as they reviewed how Dion had neutralized all his guards.

They were also going to tell her about Milla’s vision, their next clue, but then a crooked echo snaked down from the grate above.

“D yr rkgnai is?”

Without a word, Nona unclasped her pocket mirror, and pointed it upwards.

Matching her silence, Frazie and Raz bounced their clairvoyance off of it to return to Queepie’s head.

----

Loboto’s lab hadn’t changed much since the psychic siblings had viewed it last.

Queepie’s condition had failed to improve. He whispered something about a “bat tree casing” but was otherwise as quiet and ill as he had been before.

Very little was different apart from the toilet plunger that was now on their father’s helmet.

Nearly going cross-eyed in the attempt, Augustus was trying to study what had been placed atop his head. He looked just as confused as his spying children felt.

Half of the handle past the suction cup had been sawed off and replaced with a thick bracelet of brass that fastened it to a long hose which trailed off to the center of the room. The rubbery tube led up to the underside of a mangled shopping cart propped up by several extra wheels welded to its chassis. The interior of the cart was much less clear to the two psychics, far away as they were.

It seemed to be loaded with gas canisters, circuit boards, tape decks, and a hot dog roller machine that was cycling fan belts rather than sausages. Wires and pipes wormed their way out through the cart’s grills only to loop back into a different gap in the mesh. Laden atop the pile was a chunky plastic keyboard yellowed with age and an even older-looking rusted computer monitor that seemed to have been ripped out of a Cold War submarine. Bolted to the side of the screen was a curved phonograph horn; its petaled fluted bell gave the impression that it had bloomed from the machine itself like a weed.

And hunched over this amalgamation’s controls was a worryingly excited Dr. Loboto.

“I said: ‘Do you recognize this’?” the dentist asked, gesturing to the shopping cart with his claw, and hitting a button on the keyboard with his other hand.

Augustus tore his gaze away from the plunger and squinted at the mounted monitor. “Mr. Mentalis might have had something like it in his lab, but I’m not so sure.”

Blocky green text started filling the computer screen, and a flat, droning mechanical voice rolled from the phonograph horn.

[I THINK I SAW SOMETHING LIKE IT IN OTTO’S LAB, BUT I AM NOT SURE.]

Augustus frowned. That had been what he had answered, but not quite. “Why’d it repeat my words?”

“It was repeating your THOUGHTS!” Loboto corrected. “This is a Psi-Screen, or as some liked to call it back in the day: a PSYCH-O-TYPO. I simply type in my questions, hit enter, and I get to see your raw mental response to it in simple, honest text; too fast for you to lie. It was made back in the late 80s but fell out of favor when your organization invented those Psycho-Portals. Personally, I prefer the Psycho-O-Typo. Much simpler and faster to use without having to trawl through a headcase’s sob stories and assorted cranial cavities.”

“It does sound easier than astral projection.” Augustus reluctantly agreed.

“And why explore when you can extract?” Loboto added. “My employer pilfered the plans for this beauty from Psychonaut HQ. Had to make it myself from what I had on hand, but I think it turned out well,” he claimed, giving the cracked handle of the cart an affectionate slap. “You wouldn’t know from the look of it, but this is a newer model. It comes with a speaker function that spews the answers for you. Who has time to read these days, eh? And this nifty little add-on.” His gloved hand reached into an apron pocket and pulled out a wireless microphone clad in a pink and orange casing. “I just need to speak into it to have my questions register. Perfect for a typist missing a finger of four.” The pincers of his claw twitched and clacked. “A barrier-free interrogation, what’s not to love?”

“Is that a…Pretty Wingy Pony toy?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here!” Loboto barked. “Let’s start with an easy one, Mr. Tumble.” he brought the microphone to his lips. “Are you a Psychonaut: Yes or Yes!?”

“No. I’m not.” Augustus answered, seeing no harm in being truthful what with not having much to hide.

[NO.] The Psi-Screen listed and announced.

“Grrr. I thought the truth serum, learning that you’re down three feds, and that freakout of yours when the shutters opened would’ve softened you up enough for the screen. It eventually worked on your boss after all.” Loboto scowled, thumbing behind him at the still suspended body of Truman Zanotto. “Let’s try coaxing the facts out of you first. Who am I?”

“Dr. Loboto.”

[DOCTOR(?) LOBOTO.]

“Fresh!” Loboto snapped at the sight of the question mark. “Next question: Where are you?”

“The Rhombus of Ruin.”

[THE RHOMBUS OF RUIN.]

“What are your psychic specialties?”

“Telepathy, Telekinesis, Channeling, Astral Projection, and Psi-Blasts.” Augustus tried to whisper that final power. The machine made no such effort.

[PSI-BLASTS, CHANNELING, ASTRAL PROJECTION, TELEKINESIS, TELEPATHY.]

“So few. You can’t even light things on fire? How ever did you get hired as a psychic spy?” Loboto jeered. “Did you work at the Motherlobe?”

“Yes, but not as a Psychonaut.”

[YES.]

“I think we’re getting somewhere.” The dentist noted. “What did you do at the Motherlobe?”

“I was hired to repair air-conditioners, but I tried to be a bit more proactive in improving the building’s climate control systems. I also wasn’t going to turn down the odd job or errand for some extra pocket money.”

[TIGHTENED ELECTRICAL TERMINAL CONNECTIONS, CLEANED/REPLACED FILTERS, INSPECTED FAN BELTS, LUBRICATED, WASHED CONDENSER COILS, CLEARED BLOCKAGES, DRAINED DRAIN TRAPS, CHECKED FOR LEAKS, REPLACED REFRIGERANT, STUDIED BUILDING AIR FLOWS, ODD JOBS.]

“Alright, time out.” Loboto ordered. “I’m uncertain if you’re deaf or if that’s what you want to make me, but I think I explained that the machine LOUDLY announces your thoughts FOR YOU. You don’t need to actually open your mouth to answer my questions. So no more putting me in a stereo sandwich. Is that clear?”

“Ye-.”

[YES.]

“HRRRRRM!?” the kidnapper wordlessly scolded.

“Uhhhh…” Augustus trailed off.

[YES.]

“That’s better.” Loboto began to pace around the room, his shower cap bobbing gelatinously with every step. “Now, how did you get here?”

[PLANE CRASH.]

“Doy. Why are you here?”

[DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE. MUST FIND FAMILY. MUST ESCAPE.]

“Yuck. More of that circus clan drivel. And I thought we were making progress. Back to the drawing board to ease you into not being a filthy fibbing freak, I suppose.” Loboto groaned. “Where were you born?”

[GRULOVIA.]

Loboto stopped in his tracks. Though they were all yards away from the man, the Aquatos physically and psychically present could hear and see the microphone shake in his grip.

“…is that supposed to be some kind of joke?”

[NO.]

For someone so skinny, Loboto’s footsteps echoed heavily on the lab’s metal floor as he stomped towards the restrained ringmaster.

“WHO SENT YOU!?” he demanded, arriving at the foot of Augustus’ chair.

“Wh-I don’t-.” Augustus stammered, partly distracted by how at this distance he could see that his captor’s microphone was indeed a repurposed piece of Pretty Wingy Pony tie-in merchandise. “There wasn’t-.”

[NO ONE.]

“THEN WHY WOULD YOU MENTION THAT COUNTRY OF ALL PLACES!?” Loboto spat. “Are you really from there?! It might be a coincidence. UNLESS! Or perhaps…” he backed away, his green and red lenses remaining fixed on Augustus as he raised the microphone to his mouth. “Was it my boss? Did he send you?”

“No.”

[WHO IS YOUR BOSS?]

Loboto’s scowl hoisted itself into a smile, the fury in his voice turning almost joyful as he said. “I’ll never tell!”

“…ok.”

[IS THAT YOUR BOSS’ NAME?]

“I’ll never tell!”

“Alright.” Augustus said, uncomfortable with the criminal’s sudden change in mood. “You don’t have to.”

[LIKE ‘AILE NEVARO TIL’?]

“Nevaro? What is that?” The doctor’s grin was gone, his brow was creased with puzzlement. “What were we talking about again? Oh, that’s right. My employer. Did he send you here? As some kind of test? Or for a backstab?!”

“A test?”

[WHY WOULD HE BETRAY YOU?]

“Because everyone else does and has!” the insane interrogator cried. “I give that stupid lungfish a bigger body and working legs, and it ferries my enemies to my hideout. Sheegor helped those three brats steal the asylum from me. And Oleander not only got me blown out of a window, but my boss showed me proof that he tried to blame me for the entire kidnapping brainwash tank plan when the judge was about to gavel him flat. So why wouldn’t that same boss try to scam me out of my commission? It would be so easy for him…and for her.”

Loboto tilted his chin up, peering mournfully past the plunger on Augustus’ helmet and at the room’s huge glass porthole. “I wouldn’t have come down here if I’d known she was working for him. You couldn’t pay me enough to work near a lion’s den if I found out you controlled all the lions. My boss only told me about her after I had moved in. His secret weapon.” The smile returned, the corners of it slashing into Loboto’s cheeks. It did not reach his eyes. “Well, I’ve got one of those too now. She might be able to control the field, but I’ve got its star player. My contingency might not be able to win, but we can make sure that my boss loses if he tries to double-cross me.” His head swiveled to stare at the unblinking Truman. “He wouldn’t want to damage this precious and increasingly expensive hostage. It would be such a waste if the base Truman was being kept in was suddenly…gone. Such an unfortunate accident could really ruin his plans for the guy.”

The same base, Augustus noted, that he and what remained of his family were trapped in. “Yes, indeed. That would be a terrible shame.”

[WHAT IS HIS PLAN FOR TRUMAN ZANOTTO?]

“Whatever it is, it hardly matters to me so long as I get what I’m owed. He can EAT this balding bureaucrat for all I care.” Loboto scoffed. “Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled sharing session. My next question is-.”

*RING!*

*RING!*

*RING!*

“By Vardiman Black’s Molars, can someone get that for me!?” One of Loboto’s technicians did so, running forward to bring a ringing blue rotary telephone to his creator on a silver tray. “What is it?!” Loboto yelled as he unhooked the receiver to bring it to his ear. “You better have a good reason for interrupti-what? The therapist is gone?!” Augustus delicately fought to keep his face and his thoughts under control; Donatella had gotten out. His beloved was free. “That’s impossible. The auxiliary office we threw him in is a multi-story maze. There’s no way that shrink got out of there this fast; he must still be in the building. Find him or I’ll-!”

*RING*

*RING*

*RING*

“First fish to bring that over doesn’t get their pay docked this month!” Loboto’s challenge caused another of his aquatic assistants to abandon his post. The creature was panting hard as he carried an entire jammed fax machine above his head to his maker who cast aside the rotary phone in favor of the new chirping handset. “Hello, I’m afraid Dr. Loboto is busy chewing out a different imbecile at the moment, please leave a message at the sound of the-did you just say that ONE OF THE PSILIRIUM AMPLIFIERS WAS DESTROYED!?” he screamed. “The whole array!? By a…circus demon? With a harpoon? Hallucinate on your own time, damn you. What actually-? It’s really gone? You’re lucky I still have two of them left; those towers are the only things keeping those Psychonauts in the crater and more of their jets from coming in or leaving. But how to punish you and your posse for letting this happen? Let me give it some though-.”

*RING*

*RING*

*RING*

“Don’t bother coming down here, just throw it to me.” The engineer Loboto hailed hesitated, the grey brick phone in its gloves continued to shake and shriek. “If I don’t catch it, it’ll be your problem. So do it right.” The fish man gulped and stiffly lobbed the prototype cell phone at the scientist. Much to its mixed relief, Loboto caught the device while shoving away the fax machine and the servant who was still holding it. “Surveillance room? You guys have been doing a lousy job today. Why did I have to learn from other offices about how one of our prisoners and amplifiers are-whuh-no-no, that can’t be right. Agent Milla Vodello was out of her gourd on that bus. It was the perfect cage. Her…her cellmate got her loose? Joe Nash? The guy with the oily cowlick? I posted ten guards on that scrapheap, and they got taken out by the one prisoner on it who WASN’T PSYCHIC!?” Loboto was so distracted by the news that he didn’t see a proud, relieved grin flit past Augustus’ dry lips. “Send some squads to get that bus back under my control. If ten wasn’t enough, we’ll use twenty or even thirt-it’s missing? It’s no longer on the train tracks? What should you do next? You’re the ones with the cameras, find them! RRRAUGH!!!!” he howled, throwing his microphone at Augustus’ head. Though nearly immobile thanks to his restraints, the bound ringmaster still managed to jerk his head to the side fast enough to dodge it. Stickers of Moonicorn Starbeam and a couple of her equine friends softly smiled at the scarred acrobat as the microphone spun out of view. “WHO IS-?” Loboto recoiled when he saw that his claw was now empty. He had likely intended to toss the chunky phone at his prisoner instead. Gritting his teeth, the dentist marched back to the Psi-Screen. “Who is Joe Nash?” he read out loud as he awkwardly typed the words into the keyboard.

“His real name is Dion. He’s my eldest son.”

[DION AQUATO.] the machine agreed.

“Bah!” Loboto seethed in disbelief. “Let’s try another route regarding your supposedly normal karate boy son. ‘What is his relationship with the Psychonauts’?”

“He worked as a janitor for them for a couple of months.”

[RELATIONSHIP IS A STRONG WORD. I THINK HE WAS AT LEAST FRIENDS WITH THAT INTERN GIRL. GISU, I THINK HER NAME WAS. I’M NOT REALLY SURE IF THEY WERE A THING, OR IF THEY USED TO BE A THING, OR IF THEY WERE ABOUT TO BE A THING, OR IF BECOMING A THING WAS EVEN ON THE TABLE FOR THEM. ESPECIALLY AFTER THAT INCIDENT WITH THE CRYSTAL BALLS. ‘THE FORTUNE TELLER EGGS’. AS HIS FATHER, I SHOULD NOT PRY.]

“Crystal-?” Slowly, Loboto pressed more buttons, as if uncertain he wanted to input this prompt. “Crystal Ball Egg Incident?”

“That’s really not an easy question you want TO or should ask, doctor.” Augustus warned.

[SOMEHOW, DION GOT IT INTO HIS HEAD THAT PSYCHICS ARE BORN FROM CRYSTAL BALLS. LIKE EGGS. I DON’T KNOW WHY OR HOW HE CAME TO THINK THAT. WHEN GISU LEARNED ABOUT THIS SUPERSTITION, SHE AND HER FRIENDS DECIDED TO PRANK HIM WITH IT. SHE SHOWED DION THREE CRYSTAL BALLS AND TOLD HIM HE WAS THE FATHER BECAUSE THE TWO OF THEM HAD HELD HANDS FOR TOO LONG THE PREVIOUS NIGHT.]

“I think I’ve heard enough about this, Mr. Tumble. Teen drama’s not really my JAM. Let me just cancel this query.”

“Yes.” Augustus nodded. “That’s probably for the best.

[DION RUSHED OFF IN A PANIC. HE (SORT OF) AVOIDED HER FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS; I THINK THIS WAS A MISTAKE; SHE WAS PROBABLY GOING TO TELL HIM SHE WAS JOKING RIGHT AWAY. INSTEAD HE WOULD AWKWARDLY APPROACH AND LEAVE HER, TRYING TO BE NICE, ASKING IF SHE WAS OKAY, AND HOW THE ‘LITTLE ONES’ WERE, AND EVEN GIVING HER LITTLE GIFTS, BUT NOT STICKING AROUND LONG ENOUGH FOR HER TO EXPLAIN THE TRUTH.]

“You know, I never really had to terminate a prompt before. The answers the screen gives are usually very succinct.”

“Take your time. Not too much though.”

[HE EVENTUALLY TOLD ME. EXCEPT NOT REALLY. DION LEFT OUT THE PART ABOUT THE CRYSTAL BALL EGGS – I WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED AND SHAMEFULLY AMUSED WHEN I LEARNED ABOUT THAT LATER – AND INSTEAD HE SIMPLY INFORMED ME THAT HE GAVE A GIRL HIS CHILDREN AND HE DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO. I ASKED IF HE LOVED HER AND HE SAID HE REALLY CARED ABOUT HER AND WANTED TO TAKE CARE OF HER AND THEIR SUPPOSED KIDS.]

“Why isn’t the ESC button working!?” Loboto mumbled.

“Have you tried pressing ‘x’?” Augustus offered.

“That’s a letter. Why would that do anything!?”

[UNFORTUNATELY, HIS MOTHER HAD FOLLOWED US WHEN WE LEFT CAMP TO DISCUSS THIS AND OVERHEARD THE WHOLE THING. SHE WAS BESIDE HERSELF, ALTERNATIVELY BERATING HIM FOR HIS SKIRT-CHASING WAYS, DEMANDING THAT HE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY, AND LOUDLY SCREAMING INTO THE AIR ABOUT ‘WHERE HAD WE GONE WRONG? WHERE HAD WE GONE WRONG? WHERE HAD WE GONE WRONG?’ SHE DID NOT FIND THE CRYSTAL BALL THING FUNNY LATER. I STILL THINK IT WAS FUNNY.]

“It’s not Backspace either.”

“Can’t you unplug it?”

“You wouldn’t ask that if you knew how long it takes to boot it up!”

[TO HER CREDIT, GISU WAS APPARENTLY UNCOMFORTABLE WITH DION’S CONTINUED MISCONCEPTION ABOUT HER FAKE CONCEPTION. PERHAPS SEEING HIM SO EARNEST AND CLUMSILY AFFECTIONATE WAS MAKING HER FEEL GUILTY. ULTIMATELY, DION LED HER OUT SOMEWHERE PRIVATE AND SPECIAL TO THE TWO OF THEM – HE WOULD NOT TELL ME WHERE -.]

“Not even the Delete key is stopping it, what gives?”

“It’s almost done.” Augustus muttered in resignation. “You could just let it finish.”

“I’d rather choke on a jawbreaker!”

[-GOT DOWN ON ONE KNEE, TOLD HER SHE WAS – I AM NOT KIDDING ABOUT THIS, BUT WHO AM I TO JUDGE? – THE ‘COOLEST AND CUTEST’ GIRL HE HAD EVER KNOWN, AND ASKED TO MAKE AN HONEST WOMAN OUT OF HER SO THEY COULD HANG OUT TOGETHER FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES WITH THEIR TRIPLETS. AND THEN SHE BLUSHED, STAMMERED, AND-.]

The screen stopped talking.

“Got it! It was the other, smaller Delete key.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Don’t be so thankful, Gussamer. Remember where you’re sitting.” Loboto dialed a number in the brick phone and brought it back to his ear. “Listen carefully. Turn on all the spotlights you can and juice up the security systems around the remaining detention centers. That German bore and that ring-haired twerp won’t escape if they can’t hide or run. And get more guards into the crater pronto to find that bus. Loboto, out!” he hung up. Then he looked towards Augustus. “Incidentally, provided I let you live that long, what are you feeling for dinner? Tartare? Sashimi? Kilawin? I apologize that I can’t offer anything that isn’t uncooked fish or seaweed salad, because despite how the Psychonauts put about a hundred bean bags and fifty-seven hookahs all over this base, they neglected to install more than a single gas stove THAT BROKE A WEEK INTO MY STAY!!!”

Augustus noted the phrase, “ring-haired”. So that meant Mirtala was safe, but that still left his mother, Frazie, and Raz unaccounted for. Still, Donatella and Dion had managed to free themselves and were probably trying to reuinite with the rest of the family. He just needed to buy himself and Queepie some time until they could be rescued as well.

“I actually quite like raw seafood dishes.” Augustus said. “So I’m fine with anything you can put together.”

[CRUDO DI MARE, PLEASE.]

Augustus grimaced. He was really starting to despise this chatty gizmo.

“Crudo di mare? With the shrimps and the squids and the oysters, and not to mention the-?” Loboto threw up his hands and started to slink away, his sole index finger twirling a circle in the air above his head. “Coming right up, your LORDSHIP!”

----

“So that was basically the crystal ball thing that Dion didn’t want me to tell you about.” Raz explained. “What do you think?”

“I think I don’t feel so bad about most of the stunts me and my dormmates pulled on the interns now.”

“Wanna know how it ended?”

“I didn’t want to know how it started.” Frazie reminded. “Loboto did say something interesting after all of that was over. About tightening up security near Tala and Sasha.”

“So if we track down where all the spotlights and patrols are pointing…” Raz pondered. “We’ll find Tala and Sasha. Heh. This guy’s practically lit up a path for us.”

“Alright.” Frazie said a silent goodbye to Queepie as they prepared to leave his head. Through his blurry vision, they gazed at the grand glass porthole of the lab, the view beyond it already more illuminated by Loboto’s order. Somewhere in that brighter yet still bleak expanse was their baby sister. “Let’s go follow the light, then.”

To be continued…

----

Commentary:

Art by @digsnowp.

A big goal for this chapter was to do right by how complicated and provocative Dion is as both a character and an idea; to showcase both the wounded and resentful teen we saw in Psychonauts 2, and the cool, brazen, older brother that the creators conceptualized and who Raz admired who we never really got to meet in that game. Fingers crossed if I managed to accomplish this.

I’m almost thankful for the delay as I got to refine the script in such a way that it better approached that goal. Initially, a chance to earn Gisu’s praise and forgiveness would’ve caused Dion to immediately leap into action to trounce Loboto’s fish guards; his more sympathetic qualities would’ve been depicted and hard-carried by the conclusion of his flashback trilogy with Raz. Felt like it was missing something, however.

Reviewing old gameplay of Rhombus of Ruin for research reminded me of the small radio that provides Raz the clue to what radio station Milla might fancy. This provided a decent plot device to get Dion more involved with Frazie and Raz’s rescue efforts (stealing the thing), but I still wanted things to go off the rails (the shock mace starting the radio instead of the eels was always the plan) so I needed an additional reason for him to break the radio as well. That’s when I recalled where I had put Queepie in the story, and how Dion might not like what’s been happening to his baby brother; perhaps enough to retrigger his Psilirium poisoning.

That Queepie was the little brother in Psychonauts 2 who fed Dion a lot of nonsensical “fortune teller” facts (including the crystal balls being fortune teller eggs one) keyed in rather nicely to the dry, mechanical anecdote that the chapter ends with. Dion forgives! He probably gave the little dude a real big Sparticulo Supremo first though.

Another cause for this chapter expanding way beyond what I thought it would be was Digsnow’s comic of Dion landing the final blow to the last conscious fish guard. So much so that I was inspired to create a really big detailed action scene to lead up to it.

Wag the Dog? Undoubtedly. But the wag was worth it.

I tried to make it so that the way Dion fought would be reminiscent of how Raz does so in the games and how Frazie does in Later, Traitor. Palm strikes, some kicks, no blocking, and a whole lot of giving the hordes the slip.

Frazie and Raz’s angst over their powers is very valid, but Dion being the first kid who has to deal with his dad’s clumsily explained caution towards psychics probably messed him up in a completely different way.

For one, he got the raw prototype of the beware of fortune tellers spiel. Very unrefined, perhaps even clumsy. Secondly is the content: there are people out there who can read your thoughts without your knowledge, choke you from across the room, set you on fire with a thought, and drown entire countries with their tantruma. And one of them has cursed your parents and you and your little sister (and your future siblings) to perish in water. They look just like you btw; you could be near a “fortune teller” and not know it.

What can you do about it? Well, you can run and hide, and you are going to be doing a lot of that. But you can also get fast and strong, maybe even agile and mighty enough that you can protect yourself or neutralize the threat before they can hex you. It’s not like you’re psychic and can fight back with your own powers unlike some people.

So this action scene of Dion’s was based on that idea. I know that normal people NOT getting tough enough to combat supernatural opposition is a motif that has its fans; don’t fight the robots, don’t mess with the witches, don’t resist the vampires or demons; don’t you know humans are the real monsters and that you shouldn’t grief your betters? The Netflix adaptations of Castlevania and DMC are pretty loud with that learned helplessness gimmick unless you have a special bloodline, or an isekai cheat skill, or got magic. But I believe there’s a charm to the grit of an otherwise ordinary person getting athletic enough to eke out a win for the sake of protecting what they cherish. Ditto for unleashing someone like that on less superpowered foes.

Plus, i felt like sketching out how physically capable someone who’s had to endure Augustus and Donatella’s training the longest would be. Someone who could do what Frazie and Raz could do but maybe slightly better in some respects due to his height and musculature.

Though we don’t get a lot of Dion in Psychonauts 2, we at least know that Raz thinks highly of him, as it takes him a while to realize and be saddened by how his big brother is legitimately and intensely cross with him - ignorant as the reason might be, the anger is real. And the 10 year old fondly reminisces over a traversal move (the Dive) Dion taught him before things between them soured. So at the bare minimum, he can probably do all the trapeze and wire walk stuff his younger siblings can, as well as the karate chops and palm strikes albeit without the Psi-Punch reinforcement.

Back when the fight was going to be much shorter with a breezed over narration, it would’ve been entirely from Frazie and Raz’s POV from within Dion’s head (they would’ve reacted with horror to having to see him wedgie a foe through his eyes), but as it got longer, having to describe the fish guards getting trounced in various ways got in real danger of sounding repetitive (there are only so many ways you can describe a thug/minion/goon, etc).

Milla’s Psilirium hallucination was a big boon to this dilemma, though like the dimensions of the bus, I had to tweak it a bit. In this case, it was to make each of the “children” look different and distinct (Girl Scouts, Band Members, etc), which added more flavor to the fight while providing a dash of dark humor; what with how it looked like Dion was brutalizing innocent kids from Milla’s POV.

Dion was going to straight up tear one of the “children” in half (he just ripped away a shirt) in the outline, but I didn’t want the fish guards to all be smaller than him and I couldn’t find a reason why he’d rip a shirt off of a guard.

Like, Frazie, Raz, and Nona, Dion can’t sing either. I’m really running that throwaway missable line of Donatella’s from 2 into the ground to justify why that can’t be an easy cure.

Using the shock mace to jump start the radio was always the plan though. No offense to the electric eel puzzle from the original game, but this seemed to me the more “Dion” way to solve the situation.

The “Sparticulo Supremo” lore was around double what ultimately got into the story, but I cut it down because it would have been triple the length. Here’s a sampler from that earlier draft that goes into more detail as to its mechanics, they’re pretty much the only parts of them I would’ve liked to put in the final draft above: “A normal wedgie, whether solely performed with one’s arms or more efficiently with the addition of complementary muscles, cares little for the state of the victim’s underwear after the fact. The Aquatos, strapped for cash as they often were, couldn’t afford to buy new pairs just so Dion could intimidate his brothers and sisters in the process. He had even been grounded for stretching out and accidentally tearing them in his attempts to keep the peace. The “Sparticulo Supremo” was crafted to reduce such misfortune. Firstly, Dion made sure to flip and tuck the waistband into the fabric directly beneath to spread out the surface area of the launch. Secondly, he sent the offender skyborne with a practiced process akin to professional weightlifting routines, maximizing height, pressure, and indignation in as short a time frame as possible.”

The extra time needed to complete this chapter also gave me more time to come up with more dialogue and scenes for Milla. Originally, she said about as much as she did in the original Rhombus of Ruin game, but the expansion of the chapter permitted her to react naturally to the unfolding chaos - it all sort of spilled out. So you got to see her valiant, worried, horrified, a bit broken, and even jealous.

Jealous Milla was an unexpected favorite aspect of this chapter for me, as it’s not something we see a lot of in Psychonaut fan stuff, and it provided a relatively organic clue to Sasha’s whereabouts (it also let me squeeze in another Later, Traitor reference!).

The Psi-Screen/Psych-O-Typo was fun to design and write for. Might use it for more stuff in the future.

Loboto was initially going to just use one phone and switch lines due to getting multiple calls for it, but I figured I might as well take advantage of the Rhombus of Ruin having loads of stuff from across time periods to put in a quick comedic sequence.

When you see Nona in this pose, that means she has something new to talk about. It might not help you escape the Rhombus, but this could be a great chance to learn more about her past, the Aquato family history, and just who among her grandchildren is her absolute favorite.

FAMILY

Lazarus Aquato

Nona: A very bold and wonderful circus ringmaster, but, well, I know some might call it “romantic” and Lazarus was quite principled otherwise such as when he protested against the Gzar despite the risks to his circus’ reputation - but don’t you think it was a bit iffy that he was willing to drop a grudge spanning centuries between two feuding families just because a daughter of the Galochios had a pretty face? Frazie: …no? Raz: If he hadn’t, then dad would’ve never been born. WE would’ve never been born. Nona: Oh, I’m sure you all would’ve popped up later down the lineage give or take a few years.

Augustus

Nona: My boy has such a beautiful smile. It’s a blessing that I’ve been able to see it almost every day.

Donatella

Nona: (tersely) Children, one of my greatest wishes is that when you and your siblings find spouses, they are loving, loyal, and dependable partners. And that all five of them bring your mother Donatella as much comfort, joy, and pleasantness as that woman has given me for nearly 20 years. To my dying breath, that will be in my prayers.

Dion

Nona: Like a carnival prince from a fairy tale. If I hadn’t been midwife to his birth-. Raz: Ew. Nona: Shush! Anyway, I would’ve sworn he had walked out of a storybook to be part of our lives. And he so loves the circus. So if either of you two or any of the others must leave our little troupe, please be sure to write or call him regularly. Or send him one of those “e-mills” that are all the rage nowadays.

Frazie

Nona:  Of course your hydrokinesis scares me! I’d be nuts if it didn’t. But it makes me more sad than anything. My sister and I had oh so much fun with it when she was alive. So I know that wonderful things can be done with this power. And that it’s in extremely good hands.

Raz

Nona: What? You fishing for compliments while your grandma is more put together, Razputin? Who helped you hide your comic books, eh? And don’t think I don’t know that those goggles are actually Psychonauts merch you ordered from a magazine and not pilot gear like you told your parents. How about a few dozen kissies so you don’t worry so much about what I think of you?

Mirtala

Nona: Yes, Frazie. Your fears were real. Tala is my favorite granddaughter. No, it’s not due to your teenage angst, your gangly growthspurt, or your increasingly husky voice; we all go through that. Mostly because she responds so cutely to my tickles. Like your father! Be more ticklish for your Nona, Frazie. That is one of the skeleton keys to my wrinkled, old heart. And maybe even my will!

Queepie

Nona: The world’s strongest five year old boy, and its most adorable little dancer. Ahhhhh, he shouldn’t be so shy about that. He isn’t bashful about his strength, after all. I guess your mother’s gorilla genes were good for something. Raz: Whuh? Nona: I guess your mother’s ballerina genes were good for something.

The Galochios

Nona: Alright, family secret. Though we insisted that we were fortune tellers, very few of the Galochios could actually see the future. Way back in the past, it was just assumed that all psychics could do that. In actuality, it was a very rare skill. By the time our clan realized that, my ancestors were too proud and jealous to throw away such a prestigious part of their identity. Those that weren’t precognitive got by with faking it with mind-reading, sleight of hand, and occasionally plants in the audience. We never stopped hoping we’d get real seers. In fact, our parents were more disappointed in the sister who was hydrokinetic instead of precognitive than the sister who wasn’t psychic at all. Frazie: Poor Aunty Lu. Nona: Bah, not that I turned out much better. I travel with “The Flying Aquatos” for pity’s sake, and I know none of us clowns can actually fly. Raz: Oh, but Frazie can levitate, I think. Nona & Frazie: That’s not the same, Raz.

Grulovia

Nona: Augustus tried to arrange some “return tours” to Grulovia. However, whenever we got close to our home country, I couldn’t stop myself from weeping until we turned the other way. I’m certain it’s recovered some from all the flooding and the freezing and the psychic warfare. And yet, I may never be strong enough to go back. It was such a lovely place. Worth fighting for once upon a time.

STORY

Psilirium Cures (Short)

Raz: Know any cures for Psilirum poisoning? Something that could help Frazie and everyone else who isn’t me or dad? Nona: Get as far away from it as possible. Frazie: Ehhhhh. Nona: I know. I know. That is not happening anytime soon. But for the alternative, I can give you the long version involving your ancestor Fyodikey or the short version. Which would you prefer? Frazie: Mmmm, short, please. Nona: Playing someone’s favorite music can help lift the spell. This used to be a very useless cure back in the very old days since if you were near Psilirium, chances are that everyone around you was too busy either hallucinating or zipping around the place to carry a tune. But the record players and radios have made it much easier. Raz: So if we sang some of Frazie’s favorite songs, she might not need the helmet anymore. Frazie: That…you don’t really need to do that, Pooter. Nona: It’s worth a shot. Our voices might sound like banshees, but perhaps mentally, we are sirens! Frazie: Your thoughts sound exactly the same when they come out of your mouths. Raz: The last hurrah? Nuh-uh, I’d do it again! The Rascal Queen behind the bars or the one in front of them? Nona: The last hurrah? Nuh-uh, I'd do it again! Raz & Nona: The Rascal Queen behind the bars or the one in front of them?! Frazie: Stop it! Stop it! Stop! Raz: Did it work? Nona: Are you feeling better? Frazie: I feel WORSE! Nona: Oh. I am sorry, Frazie. Raz: Mmmm, I’m not going to lie. That was sort of a win-win situation for me. Frazie: ARGH! Nona: Frazie, do not strangle your brother. It is rude and there are more ethical ways of conserving oxygen underwater.

Psilirium Cures (Long)

Raz: Know any cures for Psilirum poisoning. Something that could help Frazie and everyone else who isn’t me or dad? Nona: Get as far away from it as possible. Frazie: Ehhhhh. Nona: I know. I know. That is not happening anytime soon. But for the alternative, I can give you the long version involving your ancestor Fyodikey or the short version. Which would you prefer? Raz: Long version, please. Nona: Well, after Fyodikey told his crewmates about all the shipwrecks and corpses and the blazing demonic stone he saw that were right beneath them, they decided that they were pretty much doomed to share the dour fate of those who had come before. However, they also decided that since they were trapped with no hope of escape, then they might as well go out with style. Fyodikey and his companions raided the cargo hold of their ship and plundered its riches so they might indulge in them before the Rhombus claimed their lives. Frazie: Like what? Nona: So many sorts. They draped themselves in fine silks, spiced their rations with exotic herbs, used rare gemstones as common currency for card games, and drank deeply from casks of vintage wine. And both among yet sitting apart from this revelry was Fyodikey and the handful of surviving musicians of the crew. They played songs from their various homelands all throughout the day and night between bouts of feasting and lopsided competitions of strength. The orchestra was much appreciated with their audience chanting along and clapping their hands to the beat. And after a week of partying, they saw it, just over the horizon. Land. They had escaped the Rhombus. Raz: Nice. A happy ending. Nona: More or less. The crew had gotten rid of their captain and had practically emptied out all the precious freight they had been tasked with transporting, but how they got out of that sticky situation is a story for another day. What you should take away from this tale is that Fyodikey stumbled upon a salve to the effects of Psilirium before he even knew what it was! Frazie: We’re a little too young to drink, Nona. Nona: No, not that. And anyway, getting sloshed was one of the first things they tried. The answer was music. Playing someone’s favorite music can help lift the spell. This used to be a very useless cure back in the very old days since if you were near Psilirium, chances are that everyone around you was too busy either hallucinating or zipping around the place to carry a tune. But the record players and radios have made it much easier. Raz: So if we sang some of Frazie’s favorite songs, she might not need the helmet anymore. Frazie: That…you don’t really need to do that, Pooter. Nona: It’s worth a shot. Our voices might sound like banshees, but perhaps mentally, we are secretly sirens! Frazie: Your thoughts sound exactly the same when they come out of your mouths. Raz: The last hurrah? Nuh-uh, I’d do it again! The Rascal Queen behind the bars or the one in front of them? Nona: The last hurrah? Nuh-uh, I'd do it again! Raz & Nona: The Rascal Queen behind the bars or the one in front of them?! Frazie: Stop it! Stop it! Stop! Raz: Did it work? Nona: Are you feeling better? Frazie: I feel WORSE! Nona: Oh. Sorry, Frazie. Raz: Mmmm, I’m not going to lie. That was sort of a win-win situation for me. Frazie: ARGH! Nona: Frazie, do not strangle your brother. It is rude and there are more ethical ways of conserving oxygen underwater.

Pursue Donatella?

Nona: She seems to be doing just fine against those fish people. Maybe she’ll bring home some sashimi for dinner, eh? Perhaps a lifetime’s supply!

The Rhombus of Ruin

Raz: How are you holding up, Nona? Since we’re in, like, one of your childhood ghost stories. Nona: That is so sweet of you to ask Razputin. But you needn’t worry. I’ve travelled all over this world. Arid deserts, muggy jungles, snowy mountains, smoggy cities, and picturesque warzones. It has been a very bumpy ride that really toughens you up. Frazie: So the Rhombus isn’t such a big deal? Nona: This is the worst place I’ve ever been in - in my entire life. If you two hadn’t been here with me, I would have expired from sheer terror the moment I woke up.

Augustus the Psychonaut

Frazie: Do you think there’s any way dad could convince Loboto that he isn’t a Psychonaut? Nona: I’m uncertain the alternative would improve my Gus-Gus’ situation. Raz: Why not? Nona: Because to that dentist, your father will either be a cerebral spy sent down here to arrest him or he is the papa of the young lady who annihilated his ambitions and forced him to hide out in this subaquatic slice of hades.

PSYCHICS & PSYCHIC POWERS

The Curse

Frazie: Nona, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask for a few months now…why did you lie about who killed Grandpa Lazlo and flooded Grulovia? Nona: It wasn’t a…complete…lie. I told you Mal…Maligula did that. Just not fully who she was. I genuinely can’t remember very well right now, but I probably thought it was a good idea at the time. Frazie: Dad says it was because you didn’t want us to hate Great Aunt Lucrecia. Nona: That sounds about right. Even now that I’m allowing myself to remember, I can’t see them as the same person. When we were girls, she would use her psychic powers so we could see and feel what it would be like wear the beautiful dresses we saw in magazines – the clothes and accessories our family was too poor to afford. The games of Puddle Trouble Hopskotch, sledding on the river in the summertime, sharing clairvoyance so we could watch theater shows without paying, and much more. There’s no way either of those little women in those wonderful memories could have possible visited such harm on so many. And yet…and yet… Raz: Grandma, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want, but if you knew who really did those terrible things, why did you try to encourage dad to be afraid of psychics in general? The way he used to talk about them to us – you’d think all of the “fortune tellers” had cursed us instead of-. Nona: But they did! They did curse our family. Lucrecia went to America. It was supposed to be a mecca for psychic research and lifestyles. Her husband – poor, sweet Gelsin – had recently passed in Grulovia’s most recent battle with invaders, and she needed to take her mind off of that. Those HIPPIES offered her a visa and a job and a chance to better learn how to use her powers. Ohhh, they pretended to be her friends, but when our country was attacked yet again, not a single one of them came back with her to defend it. And if we could have had a funeral for Lucrecia, I doubt they would’ve shown up for that too. And the curse! That hand! It’s my sister’s hand! I betrayed her, and it’s coming to punish me and take my boy away. I need to get him out of here, to get all of you out of here. Before it’s too late. Before she finds us! Before she-she-she-! Frazie: Nona! Nona, please stop. Raz: It’s-it’s okay. It’s just the three of us here. Nona: Yes...yes…just the three…I am sorry, Razputin. And to you too, Frazie. For making you so afraid of yourselves because I couldn’t face what happened to my own sister. It wasn’t fair.

Anti-Psychic Techniques

Nona: ‘Woe is me. I can sweep the floors without touching a broom and getting my hands dirty. And I can light the stove without matches. And I can levitate my sister’s nose hair clippers onto a high shelf she can’t reach.’ Yes, there is a stigma against psychics, but living with them’s no cakewalk either. The Galochios have long developed various techniques to make their non-psychic members feel they have some defenses against the telepaths and various kinetics. Mostly related to thought privacy, and that tends to be the biggest source of distrust between those who can read minds and those who can’t. They were particularly useful to me, a single mother of a psychic child, and also to your father, in ensuring that - excuse me - Razputin please close your ears and brain for about twenty seconds or you will no longer be my favorite grandchild. Raz: I’m your favorite!? Nona: Sure. Yeah. Why not? Raz: I knew it! In your face, Frazie! Okay, not listening starting…Now! Nona: (clears throat) As I was saying, Frazie, these techniques were very useful for me and your father in ensuring that our respective children did not learn from us the true nature of Santa Claus until they turned fourteen AS GOD AND NATURE INTENDED! Also they’re great for bluffing them in card games.

Clairvoyance

Nona: Word of warning. If the thing you’re using Clairvoyance on bites the big one, you are in no danger of psychotransformative mutation feedback. It is not a thing that can happen. I am serious. Raz: Are you sure? I don’t want to turn into a lobster boy. Nona: You sound just like your Great Aunt Lucrecia. A fly she was seeing through got swatted and the very next day she insisted she was transforming into one. I can still hear our father Zalto screaming, “Lucrecia! Stop rubbing your wrists together and making those monstrous buzzing sounds! You are a human being! YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING!” Frazie: It wasn’t a prank she was playing on you guys? Nona: I wish. We had watched a village screening of “The Fly” the previous weekend, so that movie might have been where she got the idea from. Whatever the mania’s origin, it was exhausting. Every day after dinner, my father, mother, or I had to take a flyswatter and repeatedly smack Lucrecia with it while shouting, “You are not an insect! You are not an insect!” over and over again. We thought that if we showed her that being hit with a flyswatter wasn’t really hurting her, she’d eventually realize on her own that she wasn’t a fly. Raz: How long did it take for her to go back to normal? Did she ever get back to normal? Was Maligula actually her fly side going out of control? Nona: Answering in reverse – no, yes, and around two weeks. Good thing, too as we were just about to send her off to a sanitarium what with her condition about to pass the threshold of a fly’s lifespan. I’ll never forgot what she said the night of her return, “Ow, ow, ow! Marona, it’s me! I don’t think I’m a fly anymore. Stop hitting me with that flyswatter. Stop hitting me with that flyswatter!” Frazie: Must’ve been the only way to be sure. Nona: Partly. To be honest, I think I must have been having a very bad day and was looking forward to taking it out on something. I had already struck her eighteen times before she regained her senses; what was eight more? Raz: I’m not gonna judge. I would’ve taken that chance. Frazie: On who, exactly? Nona: Incidentally, a few years into our exile, Augustus and I watched the 1986 remake of The Fly as a treat to ourselves. And hubba-hubba. That Jeff Goldblum in the lead role. Raz: The weird dude from Jurassic Park? Nona: This was him in his prime. And what a prime it was. That man can fuse me in a teleporter any day.

“Fortune Telling”

Frazie: I actually met a girl at Whispering Rock who could see the future. Although, she only got visions of bad stuff that happened in it. So I know that “fortune telling” is real. But can the Galochio-I mean-can we really not do that anymore? It’d be a useful power to have. Raz: Yeah…um…I agree with Frazie. Nona: Look, my father Zalto was an overcaffeinated con, but he would never lie to his daughters. Or at least, he wouldn’t lie to them about the family legacy. The gift of future sight has cropped up here and there in our lineage, though the gap of generations between each occurrence keeps increasing. Strangely, my papa was able to sometimes predict outcomes with 100% accuracy, which galled him to no end because he couldn’t do it reliably. My mother Mirtha, a scholar on the run from the Eastern Bloc had her own ideas as to why this was so. Based on her studies, she proposed that the Galochios may not have been doing fortune telling at all. Frazie: Howzat? Nona: She had two major theories. The first was that we were very sensitive to the dreams of others, occasionally stumbling into them without intending to. If you know what your client and those around them are dreaming of doing, then you know what they most desire, what they want to do. And if you know that, you have a good idea of what they’re going to do. Ergo, a prediction. Raz: What was the second theory? Nona: That we were all geniuses. Frazie: I like the sound of that one. Nona: We Galochios (theoretically) absorb oodles of information around us, and through frugal judgement and extraordinary brain processing, we are capable of connecting seemingly disparate thoughts and ideas together in a sublime neural network to craft revolutionary action plans for the romantic, economic, and even spiritual needs of our patrons! Raz: Oh, I know what that is! It’s a psychic technique called Mental Connection. I read about it in-. Nona: I think I’ll stick to believing that I and the rest of our family are geniuses, Mr. Party RazPooper.

To be continued...

----

Commentary:

Art by @digsnowp

I wanted Nona to have a similar role to Ford had in the original Psychonauts 1 both in terms of providing gameplay tips and some color commentary.

Like the chin-stroking, the cane over shoulder pose is meant to sign post that Nona has new dialogue available to avoid a player needlessly bringing up her talk menu.

Maybe it’s a bit excessive in making more parallels between them, but I thought having Lucrecia and Marona coming from a family of down-on-their-luck fortune tellers would be neat.

The 1986 version of the Fly is a very good horror-tragedy film. Would super recommend.

Frazie’s watery grave was a lot drier than she had expected it to be.

Harder and more solid, too. Kind of…metallic?

She tapped the surface she was lying on. It was old, a bit damp, and kind of crusty.

So she hadn’t washed up on a beach.

She could also sense that it wasn’t moving.

So that ruled out being picked up by a boat.

And there was no warm sunshine, crooning trumpets, or sense of universal peace and belonging.

That left only one singular possibility. Emphasis on sin.

It couldn’t be that though, right?

Yes, she had done her share of mischief, doled out some sass, cheated at cards, maybe threw things at her brothers a little too hard, and there were those scant occasions where she had cajoled Mirtala into taking the fall.

And fine, she had added to the tally with those recent screw-ups at Whispering Rock and the whole running away from home thing.

But she’d done more good than harm. She assumed.

Frazie flinched as someone gripped her shoulder and gently shook it.

“Please don’t be the Devil. Please don’t be the Devil. Please don’t be the Devil.” she pleaded as she opened her eyes.

But instead of Old Scratch, it was her grandmother.

“Nona? Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re alive! Where’s Ra-!?”

Nona put a hand on her granddaughter’s mouth and then pointed upwards at a grate far, far above them. There was a light past the bars, but if her grandmother didn’t trust it, Frazie didn’t think she would either. At least, not immediately. The old lady brought a leathery index finger to her wizened lips then used it to tap on her temple.

Frazie carefully nodded, and gingerly tuned up her telepathy as she got to her feet.

“-azie? Can you hear me? Frazie?” Nona’s thoughts rasped.

“y-Yeah.”

“What was that? I cannot really read minds, child. You need to think at me a little louder for me to get the message. Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Yeah,” Frazie thinks at a higher volume. “I can, Nona. Where’s Raz?”

A new mental voice wearily chimed in. “Over here, sis.” Raz raised an arm in greeting from where he was slouched over.

Nona smiled as she and Frazie waved back at him. “Give him a moment to recover, dear. He’s a bit tired from channeling some of his mental energy into you so you’d wake up faster.”

“Raz knows how to Channel?” She’d only recently learned how to do it herself, and barely at that.

“You’re welcome,” her little brother preemptively replied as he stood back up.

Nona grinned. “My precious Gus-Gus taught him how, and Razputin took to it with such speed. And when I got a little boo-boo, they used that power to make me heal quicker. Ohhh, they made for such a cute team.”

Frazie shoved down a frown before it could show. Yes, her father had never given her a single lesson in using her powers much less taught her a skill, but that wasn’t Raz’s fault. Though if he ever tries to lord that over her, all bets are off.

“I’m just glad you two are okay.” She makes to wipe a bit of sweat off her brow only to for the back of her palm to make contact with metal. “Hey, what’s this thing on my head?” she asked as she removed it to give the object a better look.

It was a Psychoisolation Helmet with faded pink and seafoam green paint. A large jagged crack ran from its crown to its rim.

Weird. Though it explained why her two side ponytails had been bunched up by her ears.

Well, with that alloyed hat gone, she felt much better.

Lighter.

Less encumbered.

Weightless, even.

My, what a pretty orange glow that is.

“FRAZIE!”

She woke up to her grandmother’s mental shriek with the helmet back on her head courtesy of her grandmother’s arms, and an orange telekinetic hand around her torso that must have belonged to Raz.

Once he saw that she was steady again, her kid brother called off his psychic grip. “Yeah, uh, don’t take that off.”

Nona clicked her tongue as she let go of the helmet. “You’re lucky I found it floating nearby after you got us here.”

Frazie blinked. “I got us here?”

“Probably.” Nona shrugged. “One minute, I’m playing with bottle caps, then the plane crashes, and I wake up next to my little slumbering Razputin and you who is also sleeping; the only granddaughter I know with hydrokinesis passable enough to get us to this place.”

“This place…” Frazie echoed as she took stock of where they were.

It was rather horrible.

The three of them were standing on a wide rusty disk, large enough for the trio to comfortably lie down on, but it wasn’t exactly roomy.

Surrounding the disk was a lot of water, of which the platform was only a couple of inches above.

The sifting, lapping liquids stretched dozens of feet in all directions until they met the ends of a vast circular chamber.

The curved faces of the faraway walls were broken by thick glass portholes. Most of them were shuttered and darkened, but a few had their windows lit by external bulbs. Through these illuminated screens, Frazie could make out the shapes of fish slowly passing in the murk outside.

So they were in a half-flooded dungeon that was also underwater.

Terrific.

A heavy band of sealed metal ran along the wall atop the portholes. Its surface was smooth and uninterrupted save for one chunk of it where the casing had been torn away. This left a colorful cluster of cables worryingly exposed; the wires faintly twitched with stray sparks.

Overhead, the ceiling arched upward towards the grate in a smooth, unbroken dome. Supposing they could somehow make it to the wall, its inward curve was too sharp to climb. It was like they were stuck in a decaying, iron hourglass. And they were stuck in the bottom bulb.

Shouting up for help was tempting. There was light up there. Someone could be standing close to it – if not now, perhaps later. But more than her grandmother’s earlier caution at making too much noise, there was something about the chamber they were in that made Frazie reluctant to raise her voice.

The oppressive sloshing of the inner sea and crumbling hardness beneath her feet were to be expected. The water entrapping them was usurpingly dark with how far the grate and portholes were from it. But the air…

“What’s that smell? Is that-?” she sniffed. “Is that…basil?”

“I thought it smelled more like rambutans.” Raz’s thoughts stated.

“Myself?” her Nona’s wonderings croaked. “It reminds me of chewing gum. It’s making me crave some, too.”

Frazie scratched at her temple. “I guess it sort of resembles tho-.” And grit her teeth when her fingers brushed her helmet up a bit too far, allowing another squall of disorientation to blow in. “OW! What IS that?!” she almost screamed. “It’s like my skull keeps collapsing into itself whenever this helmet comes off!”

Her Nona stroked her chin. “I think I might have an answer to that. And maybe an idea of where we might be. Frazie, can you still use your telekinesis?”

“How can I?” she rapped her knuckles on the metal protecting her head “I’m wearing a Psychoisolation helmet.”

“But you’re speaking to me telepathically right now.” Nona pointed out.

“Whuh. Ah. I am.” Frazie ran a finger along the curve of the helmet until she touched the gash she had seen on it earlier. “Maybe it’s because this thing’s cracked. Would explain why I still feel real lousy with it on.”

“Give it a whirl then.” Nona twirled one of her fingers. “See what happens.”

“…’kay.” And Frazie did.

Raz gripped at the straps around his helmet. “Hey. Hey!” he silently yelled. “Watch the merchandise!”

“Whoopsie.” Frazie released her distant tug on his goggles. “Say, how come you’re not stumbling around and fainting everywhere?”

Raz readjusted his spectacles. “Boys don’t faint.”

Nona got between the two siblings to give her grandson’s helmeted noggin a loving yet weighted and vaguely disciplinary stroke. “Ohoho. Such a kidder this one. And apparently an inheritor of his papa’s equally kissable and thick head.”

That made some sense to Frazie. Save for a mild migraine, her dad and Raz had been the only members of the family who were doing just fine before the jet crashed.

Their grandmother patted Raz once more before shuffling away. “Now that you can both use telekinesis, please be sure to yank me back before our familial curse smites me.”

Before Frazie or Raz could protest, Nona had already reached the edge of the disk. She eyed the onyx waves impassively. Then she bent over and swiped a handful of water from it.

A Hand of Galochio punched out of the water’s surface and slammed its palm where Nona would have been if Frazie and Raz hadn’t telekinetically pulled her back towards. The curse gouged long, thin lines in the steel as it returned to the dark.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” Frazie had to bite her lip not to scream that.

“Nona, why?” Raz almost wept as he and Frazie helped Nona get upright.

The old Aquato simply stood. She brought the water cupped in her right hand up to her lips and stuck her tongue in it. “Hmmm. Brine and rust. Of course,” she pondered as she gave it another taste. “Ahhh. There you are. Cobalt and…” she lapped more of it into her mouth, thoughtfully sloshed it in her cheeks, and then swallowed it. “…the telltale sprinklings of cashews. I thought as much,” she tossed the rest of the water over her shoulder before looking at her grandchildren. “Frazie, Razputin, I have very bad news. This water, and perhaps even the very sea outside this room, is loaded with Psilirium particulates.”

“Psilirium.” Raz squinted. “Where have I heard that word before…?”

Frazie tried racking her exhausted brain herself. “Are you sure don’t mean Psitanium?”

Nona made a disappointed tsk. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Totally different mineral. Psitanium makes psychics more psychic and makes non-psychics cuckoo. Psilirium on the other hand, severely debilitates psychics – it can even cause them to see things that aren’t there - and makes non-psychics-.”

“Smarter?” Raz volunteered.

“Ahahahaha. No.” Nona replied. “It also makes them cuckoo but in a different way. By making them, how to describe it? Super-duper-ultra focused. Locks them into the last powerful emotion they had before exposure to the point of mania. So the angry get furious, the curious become obsessed, and so forth. They can be stuck like that for hours or even days depending on how much they were hit with…or how long their bodies can hold out.”

“Why do you know that?” Frazie asked.

Nona sighed wistfully. “The Galochios had a little Psilirium tchotchke back in the old country; a knickknack brought home by a sailor ancestor.” She didn’t notice her grandchildren tense at hearing their Nona refer to herself by her maiden name for the first time in their lives. “Our non-psychic family members would bring it out when they needed a little study aide for big exams or had to stay awake during tax season. Kept the GPAs high – you’re looking at the Magna Crumb Laudable of Grulovia’s most esteemed university right now - and our books clean albeit at the cost of making sure the studiers and filers ate, drank, and went to the bathroom so they wouldn’t die or dishonor themselves. We were mostly good at that.” A smile trembled up her lips then disappeared. “I’ll draw you two a picture of it later. I no longer have it. It was lost in the Deluge, you know.” At the sight of her oldest granddaughter averting her gaze and awkwardly scratching at her elbow, Nona forced the smile back on. “Ambush hug.” Though that she’s thinking these words ruined the surprise, Frazie nonetheless appreciated the quick embrace she received.

Raz hid a little smirk behind a gloved hand at how Frazie was trying not to enjoy the hug too much. “Is the Psilirium why you’re a little more…?”

“Put together?” his grandmother finished for him. “I suppose. So let’s make use of my wits while I still have them, yes?” she chided as she released Frazie. My how she’d grown. “Next up, I’d like for you two to use Clairvoyance on some fish to take a looksie outside. Maybe froooooooom that window,” she pointed to one of the well-lit portholes and the sea life swimming outside of it.

“Alright. I’ll scout ahead.” Frazie rolled her shoulders back. The fish were a little far, but she’d been improving her max distance with this particular psychic ability for a while. “See you in a few.”

“Frazie,” her Nona said. “I said that the TWO of you should-.”

But Frazie had already formed a mental connection with the first fish she was able to spot. Her consciousness rode that invisible line all the way to her target’s eyes.

She was relieved that the animal wasn’t immediately torn apart by a Hand of Galochio. It looked like simply inhabiting the headspace of something underwater didn’t trigger the curse. With that no longer a concern, she could ride this creature’s sight around the area in search of clues to where they were, how they should proceed, and perhaps what that strangely familiar orange glow creeping into the corners of her vision was.

“GAH!” Frazie recoiled as her consciousness tumbled back into her head. “For crying out loud. What went wrong this time!?” she wordlessly fumed.

Not to be outdone, Nona strangled the air with both of her bandaged hands and glared up at her. “It is as you said Frazie. Your powers are greatly diminished due to the Psilirium. That is why you must bring Raz with you into the fish brains. Right now, you are too weak and he is too inexperienced-.”

“Inexperienced is a bit harsh.” Raz tried to protest.

“-but together, you will be stronger.” Nona finished.

“I-ugh-.” Frazie turned her thoughts to her brother. “Do you even know how to use Clairvoyance?”

Raz fiddled with a button on his jacket before shaking his head. “No.”

“So teach him, Frazie.” The old lady challenged. “You are very smart, and he is a fast learner. You can do this. You need to do this.”

Frazie took a deep breath of that strangely sweet air around them and made her way to Raz. He was still a little sullen. He could be such a baby sometimes.

After all, she was always going to teach him whatever she would have learned at Whispering Rock. She’d be a bit coy, perhaps make him earn it a tad by having her do a couple of her chores or fork over some cash to “jog her memory”, but she would have shared every last bit of what she knew by the caravan’s campfire or at a nearby field on a starry evening or a clear day.

Frazie being shipped off to Motherlobe just made that dream encounter even bigger with each advanced course and drill she took. The Aquato wagons would roll into the facility’s parking lot to pick her up (LEGALLY), she’d hand over a bunch of souvenirs, and then show them around the place. Afterwards, she and Raz would chat at the practice range or perhaps Lili’s private garden. She’d tell him the full story of her adventures, including the finer details she had omitted from her letters in order to tease him. Ideally, she’d tutor him in a specific psychic skill during the parts in her tale when she had learned them. It was an idea Vernon Tripe had suggested to her when she had seen the young boy last: interactive fiction – he said it would be all the rage soon.

That dream was impossible now. There would be no tours or Honey Pepper Boar Bacon sandwiches. No strolls down memory lane on soft grass. They’d burned that bridge when they had raised hell at Psychonaut HQ and stolen the Albatross. They couldn’t even see the sky where they were.

But there were still lessons to be taught. She’d just have to skip about, say, twenty chapters in her narrative to get to what Raz needed to know. Frazie just had to add a cup of sugar first.

“Raz, did I ever tell you how old my Clairvoyance teacher was?”

“You wrote about her. Chloe, right?” Raz recalled. “The camper who thought she was an alien? How old was she?”

“She was 7.”

Raz’s cheeks puffed out, his lips barely containing the laughter his thoughts were roaring with. “Hahahaha! You got Clairvoyance lessons from a kid half your age!? How young was your Shield instructor? Still in preschool?!”

Frazie tucked her left hand behind her back so she wouldn’t be tempted to bop Raz with the fist it was curling into. “Chloe’s smart as a whip. And for your information, I learned how to make psychic shields on my own.” Frazie preened. “So, are you ready to learn Clairvoyance? Or are you going to be shown up by a girl who’s three years younger than you?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Raz dismissed, performing a couple of light stretches to vent out his renewed confidence. “Let’s do it.”

“Good. So you can astral – I mean - Channel, yes?”

“Yup.”

“Then you can use Clairvoyance. It’s sort of the same thing, kind of. And you can do both at the same time. Except instead of just pushing psychic energy into someone – or something’s - mind, you try to push YOURSELF into their eyes first.”

“Right. Of course.” Raz nodded. “But, um, how?”

“You’ll have to guide your focus beyond their brain. Scan their heads until you find a route into their optic nerves.” Frazie pointed at her eyes. “That sounds kinda daunting, but it’ll happen faster than you think, and it’ll get easier the more you do it.”

“Cool. I’ll try it on you, then.”

“That is not going to happen, Pooter. My head’s aching enough as it is. I don’t need you rattling around in it.” She glared, hands on the hips of her polkadot scrubs. “And you can forget about using Nona as a guinea pig.”

“I wasn’t gonna.” Raz protests. “But do you really want me to just jump straight into a fish’s brain for my first go at Clairvoyance?”

“Or an eel. An octopus could work, too.”

“Fine.” Raz’s brow furrowed as he squinted at the lit porthole Frazie had tried to use a moment before. “Alright, I see one. But if I grow gills or a tail because of this, it’ll be your faul-!” his eyes closed, his body slackened, and his expression calmed.

“Whoa, he really is a fast learner.” Frazie thought.

“Told you.” Nonna reminded.

“Fair enough. I’m going to try and catch up with him. See if we can maybe find the rest of the family, too. Will you be alright here by yourself?”

“I’ll need to be. Someone has to stay behind and make sure your bodies don’t topple into the water while you explore.” She gestured towards Raz before continuing. “Just do me two favors.  They’re very important for figuring out where we are. First, try to look down. See what may be beneath. And keep your eyes peeled for anything strange or out of place in the deep blue sea.”

“Like the jet we flew in on?”

Her Nona gave her a knowing smile so brazen that she was almost smirking at her. “Yes, Frazie. Like the jet.”

Frazie decided she must have been imagining it, and used Clairvoyance on the lit porthole. Perhaps she’d find the one Raz went into nearby.

For the first time that day, Frazie was lucky. She wound up in the very same fish Raz was.

“TREMBLE, CREATURES OF THE DEEP! FOR YOU ARE IN PRESENCE OF POSEIDON REBORN!”

Good or bad luck, who could say?

To be continued…

----

Commentary:

Art by @digsnowp.

The Aquatos are alive! Three of them, anyway!

Using telepathy to communicate is both practical in story and would be very cost-effective in a VR game, as it would save money on having to animate Raz, Frazie, and Nona’s mouths much.

Ditto for the Psilirium helmet. If Frazie is afflicted in such a way that she can’t do lots of flashy psychic stuff, then the devs wouldn’t have to render any!

Channeling in this story is a lesser version of the PSI Energy Transfer Augustus used in the first Psychonauts game and Depths of Denouement to empower Raz and Frazie respectively. At its base usage, it bequeaths mental energy from the channeler to someone else to help them mentally and to a lesser extent physically recover (it does not heal wounds so much as accelerates the body's natural ability to heal). I'd like to think that Augustus has been using it whenever Donatella, Nona, or any of his kids became unwell so they could get better sooner; may have come at the cost of his hairline, but he'd probably do it all over again if he had to. Since he's just starting out with it, Raz can't turn anyone into an energy giant yet.

Frazie’s Clairvoyance lesson is taken almost word-for-word from Chloe’s tutorial of it back in the original Later, Traitor fic at Chapter 20. It’s a short but very sweet moment; one of my favorites form that story.

Similar to Ford (who doesn’t mentor Frazie in Later, Traitor as much as he does Raz in the canon first game), Nona serves as a hint giver of sorts in this scenario. Though to guard against the possibility of players needlessly checking in on her, she will enact this chin-stroking pose whenever she has new information to share to progress the story.